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An exhibition of video works by artists living and working in and around Lahore, Pakistan
Slought is pleased to announce "The Divided Self," an exhibition of video works by artists living and working in and around Lahore, Pakistan. On view in the Slought Foundation galleries from January 12-March 12, 2012, the exhibition has been organized by artist and educator Huma Mulji, and features work by Hamra Abbas, Bani Abidi, David Alesworth and Adnan Madani, Amina El-Adroos, Ismet Khawaja, Basir Mahmod, Umber Majeed, and Rashid Rana. A reception, free and open to the public, will take place on Thursday, January 12, 2012 from 6:30-8:30pm, with formal remarks by Huma Mulji and David Alesworth from 6:30-7:30pm.
A long history of division is made manifest in the works featured in the exhibition The Divided Self, which in turn reflects the multiple partitions and truths that have defined Pakistan's 65 year history. These include ruptured democratic rule, tensions between military and civilian government, economic and social disparity, and language and ethnic strife.
Also foregrounded in the exhibition is Pakistan's physical location within South Asia versus its religious location within the Arab world, as well as issues of post-coloniality and post-post coloniality and the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. Through poignant personal, formal, and political metaphors, through humor and horror, division and dividedness become formal artistic tropes in the featured works.
Huma Mulji was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and completed her Bachelors in Fine Art from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in 1995, and an MFA in New Media from Transart Institut in 2012. Mulji's participation in recent exhibitions includes, in 2011, Twilight, Project 88, Bombay, India, and in 2010, Crystal Palace and Other Follies, Rohtas 2, Lahore, Pakistan; The Empire Strikes Back, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; and Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Year of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Whitechapel Gallery, London, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. In 2009 she participated in Hanging Fire: contemporary art from Pakistan, Asia Society, NY, USA and Ressemble Reassemble, Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi, India.
Mulji currently lives in Lahore and teaches at the School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, and is a consulting curator on In narrow or wider circles..., a long-term installation at Slought that seeks to foster a space for inter-cultural conversation and research about the state of art and advocacy.